Winter Sports - Football
“ 58 I PC JUNE/JULY 2014
The benefits of doing this work earlier means that, if the weather is kind to us, we can get it back in order straightaway, which gives us a little bit of breathing space for the first team pitch, which is the most important, obviously
different ideas of USGA specification - but it is basically built on a gravel raft on a perched water table. By comparison, the first team training pitch is Fibrelastic in the top 100mm which is sand ameliorated underneath with gravel banding rather than sand banding, so it is a slightly different make up, but performs just as well.” “On the fraise mown pitches, we have
used about 120 tonnes of sand per pitch, it just fills up all the little scars and all the levels just to get back to our normal levels to seed into, rather than having dips here and worn areas there. Our contractor, Derrick Crane, actually does a nice little extra run for us to alleviate any dips over the season. It reduces the amount of sand we might otherwise need.” “It will probably take the best part of two
weeks for Derrick to do the whole training ground. The first team training pitch and the youth pitch take a bit longer as they have to be power harrowed and refreshed so, just to consolidate, wheel back and get prepped ready for seeding does take a wee bit longer.”
“When you get a good contractor like Derrick, who has been doing this work for a number of years - about nine I think, then we know we won’t have any problems. This, though, will be the first time he has done our first team training pitch, but he is a very experienced guy with a very experienced
team working under him and, with our input, we can help each other along, so we should have as good a finish as we would expect to have.” “The benefits of doing this work earlier
means that, if the weather is kind to us, we can get it back in order straightaway, which gives us a little bit of breathing space for the stadium pitch, which is the most important, obviously. When the players come back from pre-season they need something up and running straightaway.” “In Kenny Jackett, we also have a manager who is very pitch friendly. Both he and his assistant, Joe Gallen, very much want to work with us rather than against us, which is a breath of fresh air. You can see the condition the first team training pitch is in at this time of year and most people would be happy with that for the whole season. That is a pitch that is trained on heavily throughout the year, but it isn’t just the Fibrelastic that has helped keep it that way, it is the good practices as well from ourselves and also a manager who is very keen not to abuse it. We always say use it, don’t abuse it. We want to get the best out of it for the longevity of the season. We also hope that, because he has had that quality to train on this year, it has helped Wolves maintain that level of consistency over the season to win the league. We hope it has had a small part to play.”
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